“The World is hugged by the faithful arms of volunteers”

This week is National Volunteer Week and to say that volunteers are an essential part of the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Program almost seems like an understatement.

We really could not run our Program at Southern Support School without our wonderful volunteers:

• Laurie, Shaani and Mel who do a fantastic job looking after our chooks at weekends and in the holidays
• Jacqui, Linda, Brooke, Lisa, Mel, Sophie and Marilyn who do such a wonderful job in the kitchen

The value of our volunteers was really emphasised last week when only one of my seven volunteers was able to attend – thank goodness everyone returned this week!

This blog post covers this week and last – there just wasn’t time to write an entry last week!

For the first two weeks of this term our menu has been:

Thai Carrot Salad
Cheesy Vegetables
Curried Carrot and Apple Soup
Wholegrain Mustard and Herb Rolls
Spinach and Ricotta Ravioli with a Tomato Sauce

Gold Class has continued where it left off last term, displaying great skills, participation and humour!

Well done to Dominic who participated in every stage of making  ‘Cheesy Vegetables’ last week, assisted with ravioli making this week (as well as his own job with the ‘Cheesy Vegetables’) and did a wonderful job cleaning up too. Stephen B. continues to impress us with the artistic creations he makes with pumpkins and his juggling attempts; and this week we were delighted to witness him eating so much! And Harvey is such a valued member too – wonderful participation and humour – although I am still struggling to forgive him for eating so many bread rolls – he delighted in telling me that he ate three and I had none!! And Christopher too – great participation with the salad.

And here are photos:

Thai Carrot Salad

Spinach and Ricotta Ravioli with a Tomato Sauce

Curried Carrot and Apple Soup

All of our students work so well in the Program, but one or two deserve a special mention:

Jayden– he really enjoyed smelling the mint that we harvested for our salad. And what a great job he did when washing up!

Aidan too was most impressive peeling carrots and apples.

Litiani’s job was to prepare ravioli, but she found time to assist other groups too, helping make salad and rolls.

And it was great to see Tomas sampling food from the harvest table.

In the garden lots of seedlings are being planted.

One of our scarecrows got a new outfit this week!

Lots of mulching was done.

And harvesting too of course.

Finally, the culmination of all of the work – eating!!